THE FUTURE OF BING: Microsoft's Next Big Partnerships

Shopping

Shopping is bigger online than travel, and growing faster online, which makes me assume that it’s a key focus for Microsoft now.

In shopping, Bing started off by applying considerable technical and marketing effort behind Microsoft Cashback, including acquiring a startup, JellyFish. However, this effort proved costly and did not drive the user loyalty Microsoft had been hoping for and ultimately it was shut down during the summer of 2010.

At the same time, all through 2009 and 2010, Google has been relentlessly pulling ahead in the shopping vertical. Google’s efforts now include a very comprehensive product index of several hundred million product offers though an expanded merchant center receiving data feeds from hundreds of thousands of retailers. In contrast Bing shopping has just a few thousand retailers (100 times less) submitting data feeds and only tens of millions (10 to 20 times less) of product offers.

To see how serious Google is about the shopping vertical. Take a look at their recent activity.

1 – They buy like.com for visual search2 – Google Shopper App rolled out on the iPhone and Android3 - Integration deals with PowerReviews and BazaarVoice to get data feeds for aggregating product reviews from merchant web sites4 - Organic web search results now show product images and prices through product feeds submitted to Google Product Search merchant center.5 - Google launches Boutiques.com. Focused on apparel/fashion market with visual search and soft goods shopping search technology acquired from Like.com and run by team from Like.com

To say that Google is serious about shopping is an understatement!

To top it off, they just recently bought UK startup BeatThatQuote (a price comparison site), to increase their international shopping footprint.

It's fair to assume that Bing will have to do something in shopping soon. But what?

To keep from falling out of the race entirely, Microsoft should quickly extend its vertical business relationships to include shopping to keep up or even pull ahead of Google…With Microsoft’s equity/search relationship with Facebook and integration of Facebook social graph in Bing’s search results, finding a shopping search partner that can leverage this would be significant differentiation vs. Google.

A company called TheFind.com offers the most comprehensive shopping index rivaling and maybe even exceeding Google Product Search, with over 450 million product offers from over 500,000 stores. In addition, TheFind has developed a sophisticated integration with Facebook using Facebook Connect and the open graph. TheFind includes local shopping capability that is really useful on the Web and even more useful for fast growing smart phone using offline shoppers. TheFind also shows matching coupons, and free shipping offers by pulling in data from all of the leading coupon sites over the Web like Retail Me Not, Savings.com and others.

Similar to how Bing wants to use Kayak in order to show more options to users, thefind.com can do the same for Bing on the shopping side – finding every product Bing shoppers may be looking for and from all of the stores that sell them, along with deals and coupons, and showing you the local places to buy them.

Besides thefind.com, I always like milo.com. However, eBayrecently bought the company and I wish Microsoft would have gotten into that deal. Their product is compelling and unique and would have been a nice addition to Bing. However, there are other shopping companies that Microsoft can still look at for a deal. For example:

PowerReviews – provides consumer reviews (Google has already done a deal with them)Polyvore – helps pull together user content around fashion (great way to deal with BOUTIQUES from Google)Twenga – International, especially for fast growing economies like Brazil and Eastern Europe. This could offset Google’s international shopping ambitions.